LA Program - Faculty Request Form

1. Introduction

Thank you for your interest in working with Learning Assistants!

Learning Assistants (LAs) are undergraduates who help you implement interactive and collaborative activities in your classroom. A major goal of the LA program is to increase interaction (both student-student and student-faculty/LA) within the undergraduate course. LAs provide help in the classroom to make this feasible. Learning Assistant roles are distinct from TA and SI roles. Please see the Learning Assistant Program website for more information.

Requests for Learning Assistants will be competitively reviewed based on the following guidelines:

Guidelines for proposals/participating faculty:

◆ Preference will be given to courses involving interactive engagement of students and collaborative learning in some way. (This can either be current course structure, or you can develop/adapt interactive and collaborative elements.)
◆ Participating faculty must commit to meeting with LAs on a weekly basis.
◆ Participating faculty must commit to attending approximately 1-2 group meetings with other participating faculty per semester.
◆ Participating faculty should be committed to encouraging LAs to explore careers in mathematics and science K-12 teaching.
◆ Non-required (optional) recitation session/workshops are NOT desirable uses for LAs.

Guidelines for utilizing Learning Assistants:

◆ LAs must be engaged in activities central to the instructional design.
◆ Preferably, LAs should be employed in large-enrollment, introductory courses.
◆ Preferably, LAs should be employed to facilitate collaboration among small groups of students and/or inquiry-based learning.
◆ LAs should be engaged in assessment of student learning.